Rebecca B. Morton, Kenneth C. Williams:Experimental political science and the study of causality: from nature to the lab

摘要

The awkward title of this volume is actually an appropriate guide to its ambitious purpose, for it looks very much like two (and maybe three) different books put together. Indeed, the editorial structure of the book follows this logic. Chapters 2-6 are presented under the heading "Experimental Reasoning about Causality," a tour deforce presentation about causal inference in empirical political science. This last phrase, "empirical political science" deserves emphasis because the authors' discussion covers all aspects of empirical work in political science: voting data, survey data, natural experiments, field experiments, and laboratory experiments. The coverage includes work from traditional political scientists, political psychologists and sociologists, and what they call throughout the book "political economists," a term which appears to envelop both public choice researchers narrowly denned and also scholars such as Tom Palfrey, Elinor Ostrom, and the late Richard McKelvey whose work defies simple distinction between economics and political science. The reader is walked